Out and about on a Friday!

Today I went to the dentist for a check-up. As I needed to be there by 10.20 I had to catch a bus before the watershed that allows me to travel free on my old biddy’s bus pass. It cost me an astounding £4.50 to travel to the town centre. This is why I am grateful to have my bus pass. How do people pay those fares on a daily basis? This is presumably why so many people still use their cars. 

On the bus a young mother struggled with a little chap who cried on and off throughout the journey, arching his back and flapping his arms around. Teething on the bus, the young mother apologetically told us. Further down the line a bunch of older ladies got on, commenting on the fact that they just manage to use their bus passes but also that the bus is rather empty today. Presumably they go shopping most days. Some discussion went on about people staying at home because of the you-know-what!

I walked from the town centre to my dentist’s in the rather chilly sunshine.

When I arrived there I was interrogated - had I been put of the country in the last two weeks? Yes. Had I been to any of the countries on list on their noticeboard (which did not include Italy)? No. Had I been to Italy? No. Okay, I was good to go? This was more questioning than we underwent going through security at Liverpool airport!

The sun was still shining as I strolled back into town and went to the fruit stall at the market and then picked up a couple of things at Sainsbury’s supermarket. Considering that this was Friday lunchtime, the supermarket was quite busy. But their shelves were still well-stocked. Appeals have been going out around the country for people to remember those who need to use food-banks. Their stocks are depleted as people busily stock up their own supplies. According to my daughter one of the Lidl stores in our area had run out of sugar! Why are people stocking up on sugar? A form of madness!

When I got home the sun was still shining and the temperature had gone up somewhat. So we went out for a walk, spotting signs of spring as we went along.

Gardener’s Question Time was on the radio when we returned home. We just caught the end of it as we were checking to see what was on Radio 4. One of the questioners described how she talks to her plants when she is doing the garden. She tells the chickens to get out of the way, warns the cat not to stalk the chickens and then asks the tree what its roots is doing right there! She talks to other plants too but not all. What do the experts think about this?

Members of the panel confess, some of them, that they too talk to plants. One said he sings to his. Research, he explained, has shown that plants respond to music. He joked that they did not respond well to Cliff Richard. Beethoven works well.

This too is a kind of madness.

I do not talk to my plants. Nor do I stockpile sugar, pasta and loo-roll!

Out and about in this time of crisis.

Trump bans travel from Europe but not from the UK.

Well, okay. Does he not realise that the UK is in Europe? Is it that all the other countries if Europe allow free crossing of their birders whereas we have water all around us separating us from the rest? Does he expect the virus to be unable to cross the Channel? Or is it, as a friend of mine suggested today, a move to really annoy President Macron of France? Whatever the motivation, it is an odd decision as all those Europeans could travel to the UK and fly from there to the USA. Oops!

I went out to lunch today, braving the perils of travelling on trans and buses, being careful to have my paper hankie ready in case I needed to sneeze. On the tram a bunch of ladies, probably around my age, were having a serious discussion about the virus and the carelessness of some people they know in not promptly sending home from work people who had virus-like symptoms. On the bus, though, I had seen headlines in the free paper about our PM having been in a meeting with Nadine Dorries, who has tested positive for the virus. Apparently he said that he had not been near her and so did not feel the need to be tested himself. Hmmm! That sounds like a responsible way of setting an example!

I suspect he may have changed his tune by now. That was this morning and things have moved on from there.

As regards the free paper I am amazed at how many people find an awful lot to read and interest them in it. I watch people stuff it in their bag to read later - unless they plan to use it as a replacement for loo roll! One lady was complaining that she has been on several buses this week where there were no free papers. She sounded quite bereft.

 Anyway, lunch!

As a rule when I meet this particular set of friends we go along to La Viña, a tapas bar on Deansgate. Today one of our number suggested a change. For some years after he retired from full time teaching he had worked seasonally as an examiner for the spoken component of the A-Level French examination. A few years ago one of the examinees revealed that was French by birth, the son of a restaurant in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. My friend had been there a few times and recommended that we give it a try today.

The food was very nice, prettily presented and well prepared. The only problem was that it was all very nouvelle cuisine. My main course was scallops. Now, I am used to getting a serving of scallops in Spain with maybe half a dozen scallops on the serving dish. Yes, we share them between two or three of us but we usually have other dishes to share as well. The French offering was two scallops on a large plate with what looked like a dessert spoonful of perhaps mashed sweet potato, tastefully spread out in a crescent shape, and a smear (or maybe a sneer) of saffron sauce. Oh, and a bit of rocket salad as well. It’s a good job I wasn’t desperately hungry. That explains why the waiter was surprised that I wasn’t having a starter. But I was planning on having dessert - a delightfully presented small serving of pineapple with a fancy cream sauce and a sprig of mint.

It was all very tasty, just rather minimalist. The glass of white wine which I chose to accompany my small meal was very nice too, as was the price - just under £10 for a large glass. When I say large, of course, I mean the standard “large” served in restaurants her in the UK. The bottle of water and the coffee were a bit pricey too. The £16 menu du jour only included the two courses, in my case main and dessert!

So, all in all, the food was very nice but I did not leave the restaurant feeling overfed. Nor did I feel undercharged. A nice place, unpretentious-seeming but possibly cashing in on the increasing popularity of the Northern Quarter. However, I won’t be returning there for a while.

But we had a good chat and managed to talk about a whole lot of things other than coronavirus.

For the time being I shall continue to be out and about - just washing my hands a lot!

A quiet day!

So Rishi Sunak has done his budget speech, telling us over and over that this budget “gets things done”. I suppose time will tell. One commentator said he sounded like a future prime minister. So it seems that prime minister material means being able to make speeches full of sound bites.

In the meantime it seems we have a pandemic to deal with. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. I don’t know that speeches will improve matters.

Life goes on. And today being Wednesday Ingot up and ran to the market in Uppermill. The bridle path was very muddy but at least the rain had stopped. The sun even came out at one point. It was a very depleted market made up of little more than the fish-man and the cheese and biscuits lady. Had the rest been frightened off? One lady queuing up at the fish man’s stall with me said she thought the fruit and veg man was in hospital having his wonky knee sorted out. She was a bit surprised that non-essential operations are continuing in the light of the crisis. But of course we don’t know that that was the reason for his absence.

The bus service was disrupted once again today. Judging by the amount of roadworks underway at present, I should say the local council is using up money before the end of the financial year. One of these projects is going on in the centre if Uppermill, slowing down traffic with temporary traffic lights and bus stops taken put of action. So I had to walk along to the next stop to catch the bus home.

This was mild compared with my adventures with buses yesterday evening. I arrived at Oldham  Mumps on the tram from Manchester just in time to see my bus for the next stage of my journey waiting at the stop. I swear the driver saw me running and waited until he was close before he set off. So I went and caught a taxi. At one point my taxi went past the bus I had missed, seemingly broken down. Maybe it served the driver right for bis earlier rudeness.

Later in the morning, after my semi-fruitless ( well, vegetable-less) trip to the market,  my daughter turned up at my house with the small people and the suggestion that we go off together to visit her eldest daughter. The latter was ostensibly working from home. She did not seem to do much while we were there but presumably she meets her deadlines.

Home again, I caught up with some washing and tidying up.

 And that’s another fairly quiet Wednesday over and done with.

Words. Crisis buying. Weather.

A friend of mine has given me a new word. Hamsterkäufe - word of the week - buying or stocking up in excess like a hamster hoarding food. You have to love it!

I am always amazed at the way people rush out to stock up on food or household items when there us a crisis of some kind. Maybe it’s the natural human desire to feel that you are in control of the situation. There is a desperate need to DO SOMETHING! Buying stuff is something we can all do. Consequently people go out and stock up.

And yes, I have succumbed to this instinct in the past. This is why we have a drawer full of candles. Back when we used to have winters, proper winters with deep snow as opposed to the wet and miserable winters we have now, it was not uncommon to have power cuts. And so we have a drawer full of unused candles.

Buying soap and handwash and antiseptic gel in the current crisis I can understand. Well, to some extent, although my gut feeling is that if you have your normal stock of such things, and if you are already in the habit of washing your hands quite frequently, then there is really no need to go out and buy ALL the stocks on the shelves. (It’s rather like The Tiger Who Came to Tea eating and drinking everything, including all the water in the taps!) One wonders if the soap buyers have on,y just discovered hygiene! However, I cannot understand why there has been a rush on loo-roll. One of life’s mysteries!

And so now Italy is closed! A friend of mine was due to go for a city break to Rome to celebrate her husband’s birthday. They got to the airport to find the flight was cancelled. Southport doesn’t have quite the same cachet as Rome. It certainly doesn’t have the coliseum! There might once conceivably have been a cinema or dance hall of that name, although I do not remember one from my youth there!

Looking at colour-coded maps showing numbers of sufferers of the virus, I note that France is the same colour as Italy. But France is not closed ... yet!

Is this how freedom of movement ends?

Meanwhile, here we are, back in the UK. Life goes on. The rain goes on. The river is swollen and the nearby business park has a large puddle which suggests imminent flooding possibilities. Fortunately we are far enough up the road, and more importantly higher up the hill, for this not to be a major threat to us.

 We shall see.

Travelling home thoughts.

We’re at the airport in Porto, making use if their very efficient free wifi, waiting for our flight to Liverpool. The weather, of course, improved considerably today as we leave the Iberian Peninsula. So it goes.

As the newspapers predict a big outbreak of coronavirus in the UK , it crosses our mind that perhaps we should have stayed in Galicia. But then, we are on our way now and, besides, is anywhere going to be clear of it. I hear that the chaos continues in Italy.

I read yesterday about a 64 year old becoming the oldest woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean.  What springs to my mind is the question: WHY? It strikes me that almost running out of food and having to row for an hour and a half at a time in huge seas with very little sleep is a rather drastic way to keep your weight under control. But then, we are all crazy in our own way, I suppose.

And here we go again on the oddities of the modern world.Woody Allen’s family/step family/adopted family have accused him of abuse. None of us really know the truth of this matter. The publishing company Hachette bought his autobiography but have now decided not to publish after all, largely because of protests from Dylan and Ronan Farrow. Whatever the truth of the abuse scandal, I find myself agreeing with Jo Glanville, who wrote the Opinion piece for newspaper, when she (or maybe he) writes this:-

 “The staff at Hachette who walked out were not behaving like publishers, they were acting as censors. I have been watching Woody Allen films since I was a child and I would like to read his book. I would even want to read his book if he were found guilty, because I am interested in the man, his work and his life. I do not check up on the moral purity or criminal record of a writer before I read them. I would have to strip my bookshelves of many of the writers I love the most if I were going to start to apply the principles of the Hachette staff. TS Eliot and Roald Dahl for a start, as antisemites. In fact most of the English canon would have to be chucked on that basis.”

Then there is the apparent ignorance of the modern world. Here is Jess Cartner-Morley on Paris fashion week:-

  “A great leap forward calls for sturdy footwear. The days when Parisian chic required dainty courts are over. The word on the ground from Paris is that sturdy boots are the new trainers: at Hermès and Dior, chunky riding boots ruled. Virginie Viard called her flat, biker-meets-wellie-style Chanel footwear “seven-league boots”, after the kind that Lagerfeld used to wear. (In Charles Perrault’s fairytales, a seven-league boot allows the wearer to travel seven leagues – around 21 miles – in each stride.) The 2020 version of French chic is surely its most practical incarnation ever. This look is a fashion-week dream that works for real life. Too good not to copy, frankly. I am proud to call myself a faux-Parisian.”

My point is that she feels obliged to explain seven league boots! Do people no longer read fairy stories?

Feminist stuff. And being cautious.

I have it on good authority that today is International Women’s Day. Yesterday there was a very battered and windswept banner to that effect tied to the railings next to a major road, possibly calling women to go and march in the centre of town. It was difficult to read from my angle so I couldn’t confirm that. Today it had disappeared. One of the buses I saw this morning, however, as well as announcing its number and route, every so often displayed across its front panel “VIGO EN FEMINISMO”.

There you go!

I came across this in yesterday’s Guardian online:-

“International Women’s Day is March 8. On this day, people around the world celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The first celebration was held in 1911, and the event was recognized by the United Nations starting in 1975.

It’s a little ironic, with all this in mind, to think about the origin of the word “woman” because it’s a combination of the words “wife” and “man.” You can see this if you look back at the Old English spellings of this word. Spelling wasn’t consistent back then, so we see some variations: wifmon, wifmanna, and wifmone, for example.  But they’re all saying the same thing. An adult, female woman is defined as “a man’s wife.” No two ways about it.

Over time, the words evolved. By the Middle English period, we see “wimman” and “wommon” being used. And by the 1600s, the versions we know today were established: “woman,” singular, and “women,” plural”

Okay, what a lot of fuss. Consider the following!-

French: femme = woman and wife
Spanish: mujer = woman and wife
German: frau = woman and wife - although I am not entirely sure about that one as my German is very rudimentary

There are probably other examples.

The irony is that loads of feminists insist on being called women rather than ladies as they find the latter quite condescending.

Get over it. It’s only language!

I have been in communication with a number of friends about the coronavirus crisis. Or rather, they have been sending me messages. One is worried that she might be stuck in Hamburg if flights are cancelled. Quite why Hamburg would suffer more than most, I do not know. Another friend is monitoring the number of cases in Italy. We are booked for another tour of Sicily at the end of May and he is concerned that our trip might have to be cancelled. Meanwhile my Italian friend, organiser of the planned Sicily tour, having heard the news that Lombardy is closed, is mildly, only jokingly, worried that many inhabitants of that region, being Italians and thus having more than a touch of anarchic rebellion about them, will simply move south, taking the virus to parts it has not yet reached.

Oh, boy!

We shall see. There is no point is stressing right now about stuff we have no control over.

A final point on language: how to spell ciao in Spanish - chao!

 Happy International Women’s Day!

Sunshine, chilly morning, playgrounds and the oddness of things.

The rain clouds shifted during the late evening yesterday. We saw the moon for a first time in about a week. Still the same old moon! Clear skies meant something of a drop in temperature. It was fine and sunny when I ventured out earlyish this morning. Down at street level the chemists’ signs said 8 to 10 degrees but higher up the hill some of the plants had a touch of frost, an unusual sight around here. 

My son sent us a video os his small daughter singing “spring is here!” at the top of her voice in the park in Chesham where they live, so the sun seems to be shining on them as well. Oh, to be six years old and uninhibited enough to sing at the top of your voice in the park. In view of my comments about noisy Spanish children, I hasten to add that my small granddaughter is discouraged from squealing and shouting as they walk down the high street or sit in a cafe. We have standards to maintain after all.

The children’s playground at the corner of the street already had a few occupants even early in the morning, none of them squealing either! We have often reflected on the good provision of children’s playgrounds in this city. Wherever we walk in Vigo we see well-equipped play areas, some very elaborate indeed. How does the council afford such things? Not only children’s playgrounds but there are those street-gyms, encouraging adults to use static bikes, rowing machines, mini-treadmills and the like. They must cost a euro or two!

I suppose one explanation might be the mayor’s money-making schemes. A couple of years ago I read an article criticising Mayor Abel Cabellero for the money he spent on Christmas lights on the streets of the city. We didn’t see them this Christmas just gone but a friend of ours assures us they were magnificent. Not only that, but they brought masses of visitors to the city. Coachloads of people came to see the lights. People came for long weekends to stroll around marvelling at the brilliance. Who would have thought it? Not only did it cheer the place up for the Christmas period for the residents but it brought revenue into the city. Good formVigo!

On a more serious note, I was reflecting on the oddness of the modern world once again. I keep reading about academics being “disinvited” from events at which they were supposed to be making speeches, even keynote speeches. Usually this is because they have expressed a view on some matter, often not at all related to the theme of the conference from which they have now been disinvited, a view which runs counter to what is perceived as the “acceptable” way of thinking. A simple comment is interpreted as being “offensive” to one group or another and the commentator becomes persona non grata. This status usually involves a whole lot of abusive media comments as well.

Freedom of speech, which we take for granted, is in danger of being seriously restricted! But it could be worse. In some places discrimination is more obvious. This for example:

 “Victor Orban encourages birth but not immigrants and not lesbian mothers It follows neatly on from the government’s relentless anti-migration message of the past five years.
“In all of Europe there are fewer and fewer children, and the answer of the west to this is migration,” said Orbán in his annual state of the nation address last year. “They want as many migrants to enter as there are missing kids, so that the numbers will add up. We Hungarians have a different way of thinking. Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.”
Newly nationalised IVF clinics will offer free treatment cycles for all women who want them (as long as they are under 40 and not lesbian), and Orbán recently promised to extend the lifetime exemption from income tax to include mothers with three children.”

 A kind of step-back in time!